'Volcano on the sea floor': Labor is aware of the challenges posed by One Nation, budget

Parliamentary Question Time is at best an imperfect reflection of political reality.

A preening, frustrating dingleberry show oozing with hypocrisy and faux outrage. Talking point torture.

On a good day it's illuminating. There's humour. There's cut-through rhetoric.

The past fortnight has been more the former.

Albanese understands the Westminster system

It has revealed an often hapless opposition struggling with basic parliamentary tactics, shut down by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke with ruthless efficiency.

Like an episode in the first week where Opposition Leader Angus Taylor tried to seize the means of persuasion by interrupting Question Time with a motion attacking the government's "toxic taxes".

The procedural stunt, which might have seeded TV bulletins and social media with a handy grab or two, deflated like a whoopee cushion when Taylor prematurely resumed his seat opposite the dispatch box.

Burke leapt to his feet, grabbing Taylor's unintentionally relinquished call. He ensured the opposition leader couldn't get another word out.

Looks on the faces of some of Taylor's front bench were portraits of dismay. Guppy fish gasping at the surface of an oxygen-deprived aquarium.

The bungled suspension motion is of little relevance beyond the parliamentary circle. But it's an indication of how underpowered the opposition remains.

Anthony Albanese is on track to becoming one of the nation's longest serving prime ministers in no small part because he understands every nook and cranny of Australia's Westminster system.

To the extent that political power emanates from the institutions of parliament itself, which is to say a hell of a lot, Albanese has the whip hand over Taylor, the crossbench and caucus.

A few times this week, when the prime minister and frontbench were in full flight, cracking jokes, turning almost every issue into a scoring point against the opposition, this column's gaze drifted to some of the faces in the public galleries.

One couple in particular stood out. They may have been retirees, perhaps born in a southern European country.

Their looks were hard. Stony-faced, cold, indifferent.

Who knows what they were really thinking. They didn't hang around. But it feels like they knew they weren't in on the joke.

Trying to understand politics is a mix of intuition and science. Their icy demeanour sent a chill down the spine. An unmistakable sense of a storm brewing.

Much has been made of One Nation's inexorable rise in the polls.

A second survey this week suggests the party has leapfrogged Labor to become the most popular in the country with a primary vote of 31 per cent, versus Labor's 28 per cent. The Coalition was 20 per cent.

More worrying is how many Australians think the country is "headed in the wrong direction". That's the political equivalent of allowing a build-up of forest debris ahead of a fire season.

The volcano on the sea floor

Entrepreneur Lachlan Harris, one of Kevin Rudd's closest advisers when he was prime minister, worries that Labor's tax changes are narrowing its appeal at the very moment populist parties like One Nation are on the march.

Speaking on the ABC's Insiders: On Background podcast, Harris said Labor was "very vulnerable", despite its 94-seat majority, with a primary vote that had been going down for decades. The party was, he suggested, on a "slow march" towards "an electoral comeuppance".

Minor parties are like a "volcano on the sea floor", he explained.

"They don't look that scary whilst they're building up under the ocean, but the moment they crack above the ocean, above sea level, suddenly you understand how big and scary they are … And that's the point where we are in the political cycle right now."

Harris said the rise of minor parties had been underway since 2016, but it appeared that One Nation was the first to break above the waves, just as Labor's appeal was diminishing, particularly among young people aspiring to start a business or side investment.

"That's the worst possible time to do that because now is a time to be broad," he said.

"Now is a time to be stable, to basically appeal to a larger number of people, because these competitors, populist parties, are very formidable in the current environment."

The budget's hit on non-property capital gains "sends a message to people that want to create wealth outside their super and outside their principal place of residence that the Labor Party is not a home for you", he said.

Harris, who first raised his concerns via a newspaper interview in the week after the budget, has now spoken for the first time in a podcast interview.

"Unfortunately, we've seen this experiment play out all over the world many times," he said.

Parliament resumes after a fortnight break, and the government is eager to get its tax changes through the Senate.

There's an internal view that the blowback on the budget is limited and will dissipate in time. What it can't afford is a long, slow wait to win over the Greens.

The Greens, in turn, are looking at forcing the government to wind back plans to cut future NDIS spending.

Whatever happens, those faces in the public gallery are watching, noticing, deciding.

Jacob Greber is political editor of ABC's 7.30 program.